Entries tagged with fandom: babylon 5

1. I wish Talia didn't bore me. *is easily distracted from Spider in the Web, even though it's totally plot-heavy* I always get stuck on the Talia episodes when I'm rewatching, and then eventually end up just watching them while cleaning.

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4. From the potluck E. and I organized (second-years bringing food, incomings bringing selves), I have remaining: five (5) bottles Miller High Life. NOT MY FAULT. I brought an Ithaca Beer Company mixed pack. E. brought Saranac. Three people brought wine. But a couple of the new first-years were horrified by the lack of beer and, no kidding, left for half an hour ... and came back with Miller High Life. WTF.two (2) peach pies, store bought. Um.six (6) doughnuts. Who brings doughnuts to a dinner party? R., apparently.three (3) boxes of Marks & Spencer chocolate-covered biscuits.

So here is the thing about Babylon 5: because of the kind of show it is, almost every episode contains at least five-ten minutes relevant to the arc, or crucial to characters. (Take, for example, Infection: mostly crap, with ten excellent minutes at the end. Or TKO: Soooo awful! Except the Ivanova scenes, which are great.)

So if you've got a friend who is going to watch B5, and who wants the arc, but is morally opposed to fast forwarding through the shitty parts (me: "no! honest! really! skip EVERY SCENE of Infection until the basic plot seems to be over! you can!"), what you have to do instead is instruct said friend to, you know, do some reading during the episode. Therefore:

As it turns out, I don't have all of season one of B5 on tape. Not even from the TNT reruns. It looks like I taped over some of it, all "la I shall get the dvds!" like five years ago, and, um, no. Because five years ago, it was $90 a season, and all the cheap copies on ebay were from Hong Kong and of uncertain quality.

So I was froogling around, because it's cheaper now and maybe it would be on sale somewhere... and it is on sale somewhere! For $22! That's $1 per episode! Not bad at all, sez I... until I realize it's Walmart.

Yeah. I have never shopped at Walmart in my life. Because they are evil, and I can afford not to shop there, and anyway this is a luxury. But I wants it. And it's $37 at amazon and $50 at Powells. And I can't afford that. But I want to see "Parliament of Dreams!"

Ah well. I am a Better Person Than That. Really. Probably. I can reconstruct Kosh's creepy scene with Talia in my head! Really I can!

Embarrassing admission: So I was showing graycastle "The Gathering," the B5 pilot, the other day. (And wincing at Takashima constantly -- man, I always forget how stilted her delivery is.) And so then I sent her a link to the Lurker's Guide, because the Lurker's Guide is awesome.

... and then I ended up happily reading the episode analyses for all of season one. For, I don't know, maybe the tenth time. And these are episode notes that don't contain any plot summary. Just notes. (Bear in mind that I haven't watched season one for at least five-six years.) So there I am, reading about character backstory and analysis of why people do the jobs they do and going all "Oh, man, Londo's song!" and "oh, oh, the conversation at the end of Infection that is the only reason to watch the episode!" and whatever. It's kinda sad.

Also, we were talking, as one does, of those "when I totally hypothetically learn to vid..." ideas. (You know, when I'm going to vid Harry Potter fandom -- fandom, not canon -- to Ani's "As Is" with every verse from a different POV and Snape as the "as is." This would require all of the most sneering, hideous moments from the movies. Whee! Or, you know, when I'm totally going to vid Girlyman's "On the Air" for Lex. Or the Headstones doing "Cemetary for Buffy/Spike seasons six and seven. With an Angel flashback on the line "these kinda things deteriorate.")

I mentioned this Stephen Sondheim song, written for a movie instead of as part of a musical. A song that I still can't believe made it into a movie; I figure the MPAA was only listening to the chorus. I Never Do Anything Twice.

And I think it should totally be viddable, but I can't quite decide what. I mean: Harry Potter fandom? Because that would permit some AWESOME shot selection, especially *coughs* from PoA for the first verse. Except Harry Potter fandom does every vice at least twice. Probably ten, twelve, times. The archives probably even have a genre for it, too!

Or graycastle suggested using Farscape source, but a kinda meta take on it, because they really would do absolutely anything once. (Also, as she pointed out, the "baron who came at my command / and proffered me a riding crop and chains" totally = Harvey.)

And, I mean, there's always SGA fandom: I could clip from the discovery channel for the first paragraph, and there would be dolphins! And penguins passing each other stones! But it's not really cracktastic enough.

Wow. So sineala and I worked out this way to crossover Babylon 5 and Firefly, if one should desire to do so. It requires, of course, that the B5 be AU-ified (else how to explain the whole no aliens/ppgs/jumpgates of Firefly?) but this AU requires only the change of a single, tiny event. And that changes the entire B5 history. Like, ever moment of B5 history. Down to the political structures of non-human worlds. Down to the difference between the Earth being used up and the Earth as environmentally sound. Does that not rock?

I had forgotten how much the end of Season 3 and Season 4 of B5 are television on overdrive. My god. I mean, that's certainly why they're the ideal eps to use to addict people. Case in point, my recently addicted housemate, who went to bed just now saying "only three more eps left in fourth season! I can watch them all tomorrow. I wish I didn't have to go to bed."

But. Jesus. No ep in season 3 is totally without plot-arc; even "Exogenesis" (307) and "A Late Delivery from Avalon" (312), which from plot descriptions look like they should be MotWs, are anything but.

Even if you count "Late Delivery" as a MotW, that means that episodes 314-422 are plot arc. They ramp it up, and it gets more and more intense and the pace gets faster and faster and it just keeps going and there's no break and it lasts a year and a half in original broadcast time. Shadows, Shadows, Z'ha'dum, death, Vorlons, Shadows, more death, Delenn, civil war, Minbar, Earth Alliance, captures, interrogations, turning against your own, space battle, death, death, more death, and then finally "Deconstruction of Falling Stars" (422) and everyone took a great big breath over the summer. Oy. I remember watching that in real-time: edge of your seat all the way.

sineala and I have decided that there needs to be a list of "the one where" for Babylon 5. The arc is incredible, and the action extends over so many episodes that unless you want to see a really key episode, where the main arc and the ep title match up (like "Severed Dreams" or "Chrysalis" or "War Without End"), there's no way in hell you can figure out which episode contains the parts of the story you want to see. Plus, there's a lot of secondary story in each episode, so you think "oh, 'Walkabout,' right, with Franklin and the blues-y singer" and forget the massive Kosh-Lyta-Sheridan and G'kar-Garibaldi and Lyta-Sheridan-Shadows secondary plots. I mean, "Walkabout" contains the lines "We are all Kosh" and "And so it begins." Not exactly the Franklin bluesy singer focused episode it appears from the title.

I mean, I recently wanted to see the ep where Ivanova sits shiva for her father, and invites Sinclair, and gets her father's samovar, and she and a rabbi have a brief conversation about how to define kosher with alien animals. I knew it was first season, before "A Voice in the Wilderness," and that was all. So I had to go to the Lurker's Guide, and click through their incredibly detailed ep synopses for most of season one before I found it. "TKO." Who knew? The one with Garibaldi's friend and the boring sorta-boxing thingy is the same as the one where the sitting shiva.

And I'm not disparaging the Lurker's Guide. I *heart* them. They have beautiful commentary, incredibly detailed synopses, backplot, a friggin' map of the station -- heck, they even have a reference page full of two-line ep summaries. It's just that two lines isn't enough, and three pages is too much. There needs to be something in the middle -- a page I can click on for season three or the shadow war or whatever and get lists of "the one where" at a little bit more detail.

So we've decided to start one right now. With "Walkabout," which is ep 3.18 and a weird place to start, but I just watched it today. Maybe we'll even post it somewhere. Concept.

I've been thinking for a while now that the reason that I don't update is that I haven't updated, so I have too much to say and nowhere to start. (This is unfortunately similar to the logic many people use in not cleaning or doing dishes.) I mean, The Last Six Months of My Life In 500 Words sounds too much like a medschool essay prompt.

So I decided to update. Today wasn't really a momentous day or anything, but who cares?

I've been on a B5 kick again. For some reason, I associate B5 season 3 and 4 with cleaning and packing; I'd grab a random tape and fling it in to entertain me while I worked. I've had no luck addicting people to B5 (unlike my success rate for BtVS, which is phenomenal), except on one occasion when I was moving out of my dorm room. A friend came over to do grading while I had season 3 on, and the next thing I knew he wouldn't leave because he was stuck. He ended up staying up all night the day before he had to move out because he hadn't done any real packing....

All I have to say on the subject of today's particular B5 is: WWE1+2. Wow. Just. Wow.

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I've also gained a new title: Eruthros, Evil Crossover Rationalizer Goddess from Hell. My girlfriend says to me "Man, I want to slash Chloe, but I can't stand Lana." So I started proposing people for Chloe, and joked about Dawn. They are the same age, after all. She asked how it would work, and the next thing I know I've detailed plot scenarios for Chloe/Dawn. I don't even femmeslash! And I wasn't serious! And now she blames me!

The next thing I know, someone asks me to rationalize Pete/Chloe/Clark -- in character. Nigh on impossible. Then RayK having sex with Krycek when Krycek's clearly a bad guy. Apparently this is my new purpose in life. Forget zooarchaeology!